


Sort of You

by felicitousArtisan



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 19:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/felicitousArtisan/pseuds/felicitousArtisan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A meeting with Porrim in a dreambubble helps Rose see Kanaya in a new light.<br/>-note: Old fic, was written shortly after Openbound part 1 and has since been overtaken by canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sort of You

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a little while back, in between parts 1 and 3 of Openbound, so it has since been overtaken by actual canon events (in the best possible way). I just got my membership to AO3 a few days ago, and I like this little bit of fluff, so I'm sticking it up here for my fellow Rosemary fans. Enjoy!  
> Oh, and also, yes, I use British spellings for things because I'm English.

The book was fascinating. Rose was an avid reader, of course, and there were few books she didn't think were worth her time, but this one was glorious. It was an extremely trashy romance novel, which gave a certain ironic 'so bad its good' thrill, but furthermore, it was a terrible romantic novel written by Trolls. That was immensely interesting. There were so many more ways to become ensconced in Romantic drama in Troll culture; pity was love, hate was love, and even their platonic relationships were codified and ascribed Romantic significance. The tome was equal parts guilty pleasure and eye-opening research.  
She was sitting listening to the sea. Dreambubbles were a pleasant opportunity for a short holiday from drab grey corridors. The sun shone with a vibrant warmth which she soaked in- even though she was congnisant that neither the sun nor its heat were real. She had always been more of a winter and 'night time' person, and yet two years of darkness had left even her longing for some respite from it. Of course, there was one little bit of sunlight in her life...

Where was she, anyway? Rose had last seen her sketching out a handsome paisley pattern with a stick in the sand. Clearly struck by a little spark of inspiration; something Rose found rather endearing about her; you could leave her dutifully taking notes, come back and find she had also sketched a beautiful little haute couture dress design in the margins, neatly labelled, 'Perhaps Make This Later' in dainty jade green handwriting. The young vampire's usual staunch reliability only made her moments of spontaneity more surprising and, sort of charming, she supposed. Yes, okay, very charming. She smiled to herself.  
There was a soft swish of fabric behind her and a restrained clearing of the throat.

"There you are Kan- Oh..." It was not Kanaya. Rose stood up, finding herself awkwardly at shoulder height on a magnificently curvacious young adult Troll sparingly covered by a black and jade dress. Kanaya's sort-of ancestor. "Hello, I don't believe we've had the pleasure of introduction. You can call me Rose."  
"Nice to meet you, Rose. You probably already know this, but I'm Porrim." Her eyes were the blank white eyes of the dead, yet they still seemed to smoulder under vibrant jade eyeshadow and extremely dramatic black mascara. Her black-lipped mouth twitched into a smile.  
Something suddenly struck Rose as extremely uncanny and unsettling, though perhaps not unpleasantly so. She was looking at Kanaya. Even though it wasn't her, the face was practically identical; the familiar features all adorned it, though a few extra years had polished the shape to bring out the attractiveness further, and the piercings were certainly a novel addition she couldn't imagine ever seeing on the other Maryam, it was essentially Kanaya's face in four or so years' time. The voice too, was very close, a little deeper and richer, and missing, at least Rose felt it was something lacking, the distinct crisp elocution that made every statement sound like a nineteen-forties news report. "I hear tell from Meenah that you are a close friend of my dancestor. Perhaps you could illuminate her absence." Porrim stressed the word 'close' with a devilish little flash of her fangs. She chuckled genteelly, sounding just like her counterpart for a moment, "I use the term 'illuminate' as a little Rainbow Drinker humour there between friends."  
She shifted her weight from one hip to the other, fabric swinging hypnotically in front of her chest seeming like it might cause a 'wardrobe malfunction' at any moment, yet somehow never quite doing so.

Rose felt her ears flush. She was not the sort of person ever easily moved to blushing. Usually she was able to approach things with a cool, unflappable analytical face, but this was different. It wasn't that Porrim was a provocative, attractive and openly flirtatious young adult. It was that for everything in her she couldn't fight the illusion that she was being in all these things whilst inhabiting Kanaya's body. Kanaya of all people, who in spite of her chic taste and interest in often slightly lurid Vampire-themed romance, was as demure and chaste as a devout mother superior. Rose had never seen Kanaya make a dress that didn't modestly conceal her chest, legs, hell, most of her arms usually too. Naturally she'd been curious; the dresses were always tantalisingly close-fitting around the shape of her svelte figure, but while carefully obscuring the shimmering flesh underneath. Well, now she knew exactly what she had been hiding under there, because Porrim was practically a slightly older identical twin and it was all on show. Not glowing though...  
"I've been meaning to inquire about your conspicuous lack of incandescence," she began, as nonchalantly as she could, "are you not also a rainbow drinker?"  
"Oh I can glow when I want to-" Porrim lit up, the glow building like tungsten bulbs were warming up and turning on inside her, flushing her eyes from dead white to a neon yellow that was all too familiar, "It just gets a little tiresome so I have learned to suppress it. Do you think I should teach my young dancestor the skill?"  
"I'm not sure. I personally have developed a fondness for it over the last couple of years of enforced proximity. I think she'll probably work it out for herself in time now that she knows it's possible though anyway."  
"Yes, probably, after all, I think that at least in terms of our basic structure, and so inherent physical and mental potential, we are really not so different. I could never have imagined a version of myself who could be so active, dependable, strong..." The rainbow drinker produced a melancholic smile, "She's better than me." Her glow faded back down to grey. Rose felt some relief, it helped dampen the resemblance. If only a little.  
"She seems to hold similar feelings about you. Perhaps Maryams by nature are prone to underestimate themselves in certain matters."  
"Perhaps. I will go and seek her out elsewhere. If you see her, give her a little encouragement, please. I'd like to talk to her before this dream ends."  
"I'll endeavour to pass the message on."  
"Thank you." Porrim bent down a little and made the smallest and most graceful kiss imaginable on Rose's forehead. "Oh, your species blushes pink! Ha ha ha, that's really quite adorable." She slinked away, chuckling while Rose was left feeling like her entire body had overheated and her throat was malfunctioning, trying to tear her eyes away from the swaying back and hair striding away from her down the illusory beach.

Rose took a deep breath of fake sea air. Dispelling the image of a certain other rainbow drinker wearing that dress was not only near impossible, but also something she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to do, not just yet. She could certainly stand to indulge that mental image a little longer.  
"Oh, she's gone." Oh shit. Oh no, no fuck no. Rose heard an almost identical rustle of fabric to the earlier one behind her, and heard the familiar voice. The same tone, a little more crotchety and with enunciation that could cut glass, "Dammit, I had finally accumulated the courage to- Rose?"

Kanaya edged into view; an elegant shuffle like a geisha at a tea ceremony, her hands clasped, then unclasped again fretfully. She was a number of inches taller than Rose, and the most mature-looking of the females currently on the meteor, but in Porrim's wake she suddenly seemed very small and young, her body was all bones and angles by comparison. Though- yes, perhaps it wasn't just her age, Rose wouldn't have noticed it had Porrim not dropped mention of Kanaya's strength in conversation, but the younger Maryam moved with a sinuous grace and rigidly controlled posture that hinted at the strong core muscles from years of gardening and chainsaw-centric self-defence training that perhaps contrasted the not unfit, but softer and more sensuous build of Porrim.  
"Rose. Are you all right?" The face, the same in shape though not yet so clearly defined around the cheekbones and jaw, showed a gentle, cautious curiosity and trepidation.  
"Yes, I'm fine. Your ancestor, or descendant, is quite something, Kanaya."  
"I suppose I must seem a little lacklustre by comparison." the troll's luminous hands fussily smoothed the hem of her shirt. Rose felt a nagging urge to just pull the hem up a little and see what was underneath. Was she hiding a six pack under those two all-concealing black layered shirts? Like Natalie Portman in 'Attack of the Clones' only glowing white like the shiny interior of the Starship Enterprise? Where the hell were all these sci-fi comparisons coming from? It was slightly ridiculous, even if she was an alien.  
"I wouldn't say that. Though I have to admit, seeing a veritable genetic duplicate of you dressed like that was...enlightening."  
"Are you saying 'enlightening' as a veiled reference to my embarrassing inability to modify the intensity of my phosphorescence as means to amuse yourself?"  
"Of course. I am 'The Rose Human' after all, isn't this what you have come to expect from me by this point."  
"Yes. I suppose so. But if you're expecting my physique to be a precise duplicate of Porrim's, I'm afraid you'll find I fall short in many areas. I wouldn't get your hopes up, not that I would ever have the courage to wear anything so risque." Kanaya straightened her skirt self-consciously.  
"Yes, perhaps you are a little more compact, less...plushly furnished and lacking a dimmer switch, but you shouldn't take that to mean I don't hold you in equal to or higher regard than her. These 'pre-scratch' trolls are interesting, enticing even in your fellow Maryam's case, but they are inherently predisposed to indolence and shallowness. You, on the other hand, in spite of your affection for style, are a woman of substance where it counts." She paused for a moment to smirk, "Perhaps I'd rather have the performance of a sports car than the decadence of a Rolls Royce, even if the ride is a little hard."  
"I don't understand any of these allusions, Rose. If this is innuendo, it has gone so far over my horns that it is currently orbiting Derse"  
Rose boldly placed her hands on Kanaya's hips, as though instigating a dance. As expected, her waist was tight and firm. Unlike the other Trolls, whose bodies were oddly cool like a lizard leading to a shock on accidental brushing of elbows in corridors, her phosphorescence made her body warm to the touch like a radiator. The vampire blushed, a green tint that made her look like she'd been daubed with 'glow in the dark' paint.  
"Umm. Is this part of your investigations? I mean, it's not that I find it to not be pleasurable, but, well..." Her mouth pulled taut around her fangs. Rose brought her arms around Kanaya's back, pulling their bodies closer and leaning to incline her head against a tense and slightly quivering warm shoulder, "...I'm not sure I remember where that sentence I was just attempting to construct was supposed to be headed any more."'  
"Perhaps you should set a new course for your sentence before it drifts out into the wide ocean of rambling."  
"Do you have a conversational topic which can perhaps serve as a compass for this new voyage of discourse? Though I will confess that your close proximity is making maneuvering somewhat troublesome."  
"I suggest the topic of 'Rose will not let me go until I pay for my passage with a kiss,' for now."  
Kanaya's eyes widened, grey irises with little rivulets of jade lost in a sea of lemon yellow. She cleared whatever Trolls possessed in place of a throat and set her jaw with a look of absolute determination and sincerity.  
"Okay."  
She bent down, inclining from the hips gracefully, put her hands around the back of Rose's head, fingers in her hair, and planted a kiss on her forehead, firm, clear, lingering ever so slightly, like a stamp of approval. She inhaled softly, picked Rose up with graceful ease by her underarms, and set her down again a few inches backwards as if she were no heavier than a doll. Rose found that her arms had dropped to her sides limply outside of her notice. The vampire closed her eyes and exhaled, crossed her hands chastely and then spoke in a calm, businesslike way:  
"Was that acceptable?"  
"..."  
"Oh, and sorry but I think I may have left lipstick on your brow, let me just-" Kanaya reached in, taking a small pad from her sylladex and some sort of cleaning fluid and swabbing off the mark, "Perhaps I should focus my efforts on the lips next time, since your penchant for black lipstick would cause less post-kiss maintenance. Umm, are you all right? You're very quiet. Perhaps that was unsatisfactory?"

Rose blinked.  
"I apologise. At times it is necessary to give your rambling a moment of silence to unfurl itself. We wouldn't want to see such wonderful trees of words meet the axe before they have time to flourish." Oh, troll jegus, how fucking transparent can you be Lalonde? Your subconscious is like a wet t-shirt contest and your playfully scornful statement is like this totally soggy shirt doing no good at concealing nothing. She admonished herself in her head, but, well, transparent scorn was preferable to losing all composure in the face of her companion's sparkling display of Romantic spontaneity.  
"Ah, of course. I should have been expecting that" Kanaya's brow furrowed a little. "Well, should you have need of me for further research, I will be around."  
"All right. By the way..."  
"Yes?"  
"I think next time, we should definitely experiment with the lips. Also maybe in the real world, rather than in a dream, since that one technically didn't really happen."  
"Very well."  
"Also, for the record..."  
"What."  
"I think you're the sexiest Maryam."


End file.
